and it begins....

Everything will be alright does not mean everything will stay the same. ~Author unknown

Not the new school year, but the preparing for it. The news was good. I would be co-teaching at another strong school in the district, I would be working with many of the great team members I have been fortunate to work with over the past 10+ years, and my new position~definitely challenging~but without a challenge I would be bored. The news was delivered with a flower and card from my current principal. The card has the best of the options that were available for me. A co-taught kindergarten classroom working directly with one of the teachers I have great respect for, and an LTA that I have worked closely with in every position I have been in. However, the hurdles appear as mountains in mind, instead of the hills I prefer to climb. A brand new program to the district that I would be a part in developing, in a new school with a new administrator and new faculty, in a completely different position than I had ever held. But~if you are going to do it, do it well. We were off..... This was the first summer I took off from teaching summer school....and thank goodness for that decision. Not only was it going to take my co-teacher and I all summer to unpack, organize, and clean our new space (and we had two teachers' belongings to fit in one room that was smaller than our rooms of past) but we had signed up for a three day workshop on co-teaching this summer! I wish I had taken pictures of the piles and pallets of boxes we had packed sitting in the middle of our new classroom floor. These boxes, along with numerous boxes left from the previous teacher, made it almost impossible to move around the room. My first visit, looking at all the boxes and the mess.....tears filled my eyes. I sat for a bit (once I could find my chair) and looked around the room with no idea where to begin. I left, not moving anything in the room other than the chair I was sitting in, and though I didn't accomplish much in the room, I left with a clear picture in my mind. I returned once I had time to process what was happening, and I returned with my co-teacher, hand in hand. The following pictures are actually from the end of June when the previous teacher in the room was beginning to pack things up!